Audible Editor Reviews

Separated from his wife and recently laid off from his insurance firm, middle-aged Martin Teschmaker reaches out to his old flame Jane Morris to spice things up in his life, but little does he know that she'll entangle him in a web of intrigue and espionage in which nothing is quite as it seems.

Richard Bligh's deep, rich baritone and pitch-perfect performance are an ideal match for McCutcheon's tight, hard-boiled prose and often sardonic tone, and his elastic vocal abilities capture the subtle idiosyncrasies and tics of this kaleidoscopic collection of morally ambiguous characters.

Publisher's Summary

In a wintry graveyard, a young man looks death in the eye and does not live to tell the secrets he holds. In Russia, the opening of a dusty archive reveals clues about a deadly mission which went terrifyingly wrong. In an isolated farmhouse, an old man is kept prisoner while his captors try to extract vital information from his rambling mind.

Into this sticky web of deceit and intrigue stumbles Martin Teschmaker, a newly redundant insurance investigator who has just been deserted by his wife. Seeking relief from his mid-life crisis, Teschmaker contacts an old girlfriend, Jane Morris. With that one phone call he is plunged into a dangerous underworld where nothing and no one can be taken at face value. As he attempts to remove the masks, Teschmaker realises the truth is more complex and chilling than he could ever have imagined. Somehow he has to bring this treacherous game to its conclusion without getting himself killed.